I do not do any water changes for the 2 weeks - not once have I ever had a re-infection. I also don't do vacuums of the tank. I know many people say that you must, but in my experience you do not have to.

I do not, and I bring the temp up to 88. Again, everyone says you have to....and if you find your fish gasping at the surface, then it's probably a good idea to do something to increase aeration. Ive never needed to add aeration. With a betta, that's not going to be a problem because they can breath air.

I ALWAYS used aquarium salt when treating ick, and every other day I would gravel vac the gravel(where the ick parasite spends part of it's life cycle). If, after 2 weeks, I saw no improvement I would resort to using coppersafe as a last resort.

What jaysee recommended is the minimum, and although that has worked for him/her it doesn't work for everyone.

Sure, lots of people go all out doing this that and the other thing. Some may even say you have to sing to the fish while treating with heat, salt and meds. Dancing may help too. What I do has always worked for me, time and time again. Obviously, or else I wouldn't do it that way.

I'm sure that for ever one case you can find of the heat treatment not working, I can find 10 where it does.

Elpenajr - The heat treatment takes about 5 days for the spots to be gone, just so you know what to expect.

Heat alone may work but salt is effective and very safe when it comes to medications. Siphoning the tank isn't 100% necessary but it may help.

I'm not saying that salt is not effective - my point is that if you are going to administer a heat treatment, it's just unnecessary. Salt isn't going to make things any deader than they will already be. It's redundancy.

To prove a point a little while back, I allowed a fish to get infested with ich before I began the heat treatment. Normally I treat all new fish for ich with heat while in quarantine. But I wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the treatment, so I stopped beginning the treatment immediately in hopes of seeing an infestation.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQm5wit0e1A]Ich - YouTube[/ame]

After 3 days at 88 degrees....

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzhea5CKZ0o]Ich 2 - YouTube[/ame]

Much improvement. After 5 days the spots were gone. I finished the 2 week treatment, and when the quarantine period was over I added the fish to the show tank.